


Firebranded

by hey there sunshine -- (thatsquite_punwise_ofyou)



Category: Wanderlust (RP)
Genre: Backstory, Fantasy, Fire, Gen, Wanderlust, Wanderlust (RP) - Freeform, big yike, characters, grief??, it's not even funny, loss :(, oof, righteous use of fire imagery, so much fire imagery, unedited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:35:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23750161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsquite_punwise_ofyou/pseuds/hey%20there%20sunshine%20--
Summary: Ring around the rosies, a pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	Firebranded

**Author's Note:**

> listen guys it's unedited and kinda crap ngl, especially compared to other stuff in the wanderlust tag- but i tried- please forgive me in advance-

In the dead of night, a fire raged.

Its writhing roars went unheard to the sleeping citizens of Valmerys. It cradled a homely cottage like a vengeful mother embracing her unrepentant child. Her tongues licked the dry straw. Her heated breast encompassed the little home, choking the three lives beating inside.

Outside, the world was cold. Those who’d noticed the house fire - surely the result of an unchecked fireplace - cowered in their own, unscathed homes lest the ill-tempered flames race their way.

Although the source of the fire would be attributed to the unkept fireplace that had been left crackling peacefully downstairs in the night, the true source lay sleeping in bed. If the fire was any discomfort, the child didn’t give any sign of it. To his sleeping mind, there was no threat. Had he been conscious of the threat consuming his home around his body on the bed, Kafka surely would have let panic take over and flee as any rational person might. But to his nature, fire was nothing to be worried about.

Unfortunately, his parents had no such protection, and the choking smoke smothered them awake. Husband and wife sat up with confusion, but locked eyes once the situation had penetrated their groggy minds.

That fireplace had been peacefully on its way to burning out when they’d gone to bed. There was only one other source of fire in their house that could have created an inferno this large this quickly: Kafka, their son.

Kafka was not a particularly intimidating boy. He was small, with a small stature and small features. But at school, he was known for a big smile and a big heart, things that more than made up for everything else.

And at home, he had created a big fire.

Missus Ivy Vulkan-Crowe had dreaded this night. She had had no way of knowing when it would come; the last burner in her family had been her grandfather, and by the time Ivy was born, the Vulkans had moved to Valmerys; hardly a place to study the nuances and fine details of the fire elementals littered across her family tree.

“Go wake him up, we need to get out,” Alden Crowe ordered his wife. He was nothing short of mundane, compared to his wife; the only thing remotely special about Mister Crowe was his status as pure human. But then, this was the status held by most in Valmerys. Unlike the rest of his family, he was not firebranded.

Ivy wasted no time with nodding. She fled the bedroom and carefully avoided the encroaching fire.

Kafka woke up in the arms of his mother. He wrinkled his small nose. “Mama, why is it so hot? I thought it’s wintertime,” he said, lips moving with numb laziness that came with being rudely awoken.

What else could a scared mother do? but caress her son’s face and quietly assure him “Things are alright, my Firefly,” they just needed to leave the house for a little bit. He couldn’t know the danger he was in.

Valmerys was not kind to magic. Practising such arts was published to be punishable by death. The monarchy only barely tolerated the other kingdoms, rich in the magic that differed them from the pureblooded humans stinking up Valmerys.

The law claimed to execute magic wielders, but Ivy had heard from hushed voices spoken by her elders that this was not the whole truth. She remembered her uncle Kenneth being dragged away by the guards but never did hear of any execution. She remembered her grandfather being summoned to the city police yet no news of either arrest nor punishment for any crime had been given. This left one option, unspoken of lest the Nelakis family be named hypocrites: those with magic were used in cruel experiments, freaks of nature turned to freaks of science.

This fate would not befall her son.

Luckily for the Crowe family, their home had enough stone and metal components that it was not burnt entirely down; however, it was severely damaged. In the morning, with an air of resignation that came with having no better options (at least, none that were feasible- all of both Ivy and Alden’s family members lived in little towns that would take days to travel to from the city! And that was assuming the Crowes weren’t stopped by Valmerys authorities first), they began to put their house back together.

They spent their nights bunking with their kind – and luckily unsuspicious – neighbours (the Hans family accepted their request for shelter most graciously) and spent their days alternating between working their own jobs and rebuilding the house. After all, income to purchase materials needed had to come from somewhere!

Kafka was sent off to school during the days, and – having deemed himself a man and therefore suitable to do so – assisted his parents in the evenings. At night, he slept with the twin Hans brothers of Kafka’s age. He would have been more satisfied assisting full-time, but the assistance he did give would have to suffice.

Ivan and Peter attended the same school as Kafka; they sat in the same classrooms and ate the same food and spread the same gossip concerning the same teachers. They were friends, sort of. Young, prepubescent children could not be expected to abide by social rules dictating any divide between their own unless those rules were formed by their own tiny society.

“Off to school with you three,” Missus Crowe urged the trio of boys, all half-asleep after a night of playful betting over who could stay up the longest. Drunk with fatigue, none were able to stay sober enough to be awake, much less recall who endured the longest.

Without much protest, the yawning boys gathered their bags. On their way out, Ivy Crowe embraced her son with a little more attachment than she normally did. She planted a long kiss on his forehead, which succeeded in thoroughly embarrassing Kafka in front of his friends. He waved her off, and set out with his friends.

With the route to their schoolhouse well-memorised after years of trekking there every morning, their parents entrusted them to prance and laugh the ten-minute walk without supervision.

In the middle of laughing at something Ivan had said, Kafka watched a contingent of armoured men trooping in the opposite direction. The harshest-looking of them was adorned with a brilliant red badge that reminded Kafka of fat roosters that strutted up and down some of the streets and occasionally crowed- even when it wasn’t morning. The rooster-soldier did not take any initial interest in any of the giggling schoolboys, but Kafka made the mistake of looking up from his proud red medal to the man’s eyes.

The guard’s marching gait did not stammer, but his already-harsh features seemed to harden a little more. Maybe he just didn’t like kids. Kafka looked away.

He quickly forgot the guard; there were more important things to worry about, like how Kafka hadn’t completed his assigned schoolwork.

Then again, he supposed that his house burning down would make a legitimate excuse. It didn’t stop his stomach from its gnawing; Kafka swore it was trying to digest itself.

Missus Gurney was a lovely lady. Anyone in attendance at St. Rosseau’s could tell you that. There was only one argument that could be made against this claim: Mrs. Gurney had no tolerance for two things in this world: tardiness, and tardy homework. Or perhaps that made it intolerance for one thing in the world, this being tardiness.

For older kids, homework was hardly a concern. Grownups didn’t even get any of their own homework!... but to a little boy like Kafka, unfinished homework was just about the worst crime committable.

And thus, he trudged with his friends toward the schoolhouse. With every step, another lead weight added itself onto his guilty shoulders. A prisoner taking his funeral march. It came to the point that even the laughing exchanges with his friends could not carry the burden of Kafka’s cross for him.

As the brick building rose into view, his pusillanimity rose, too. Kafka’s palms went quite warm, as they often did when he was nervous. It crossed his heated mind that his palms were never sweaty as many characters in books’ hands were. But the thought flitted away as quickly as it had come; his condemnation was nigh. The schoolhouse encroached.

Kafka’s breaths were not breaths- gasps would be a better term. He remembered seeing a fisherman at the docks unloading a net of fish. They’d all been flopping around with mouths agape, floundering for air. He felt rather like a fish, gasping for air.

But a sudden relief of oxygen ignited his brain, like a fire taking to wild brush. Kafka’s mind was illuminated with a reassurance: Mrs. Gurney would understand. After all, it wasn’t his fault his house had gone up in flames.

The roaring panic in Kafka’s gut calmed from a wildfire to a pleasantly crackling hearth.

As he, Peter, and Ivan approached the yard, they were swarmed with their friends who’d caught wind of the Crowe fire over the weekend. It might’ve left the Crowe family without a working domicile, but it sure left Kafka with lots of people interested in talking to him.

“I didn’t even know there was a fire until my mama woke up me up,” Kafka told a group of enraptured classmates as they distractedly walked alongside him. “But then she did wake me up, and we had to run right outside so we didn’t burn to death!”

By lunchtime, though, his story had morphed into something a little more extravagant: “I saw the guy who set our house on fire, just when I was falling asleep… I thought he was a normal guy, but he wasn’t! I went to sleep, and my parents nearly died because of my, uh, nonvigitance.” His classmates were wide-eyed and believing enough both to accept his growing tale and to turn their cheeks from Kafka’s creating of words. Nonvigitance would surely become a new trend in their little society.

But the morning’s gossiping quickly came to a cease when the schoolbell shrieking incessantly signaled starting classes.

And that meant the time had come for Kafka to slay his dragon (not that dragons were an issue in Valmerys; he knew of the lizard kings only from storybooks) and confess to Mrs. Gurney.

He found that the reminder of this thing he’d been dreading acted as a flint that rubbed against his steel of underlying guilt that had quietly gnawed at him all day, ignored in the throngs of fellow students asking to hear about his home. And now, with that distraction gone and hellfire imminent, Kafka found his nerves aflame.

There might be one saving grace, Kafka realised a moment later as smoke rose to form a burning halo around his head. The halo dissipated, though; he had found ice to quench his burning guilt. Well, water would be a more apt reliever; His idea affected a trip to the loo.

A chorus of chatter moved past Kafka, as if the owners of these voices laughing and talking were leaving him behind. Their backs were the only thing facing him, but even then, they weren’t really facing him if they left him behind. Nobody asked for his story; that entertainment had exhausted itself after repeated tellings throughout the day.

It cast a hot blush across his body, like tongues of an untamed hearth. Kafka knew logically that there was nothing meant by it; they all had obligation to attend their classes and their businesses. But his mind wasn’t so far away from his burning heart.

He retreated to the bathrooms with warm eyes and warmer bosom. Another boy, in the grade above Kafka, neatly washed his hands. His eyes grazed over Kafka’s rather homely look. Kafka was not necessarily an unhandsome boy – he showed great promise once matured a little – but with grime lining the edges where cleanings couldn’t reach, his appearance didn’t quite chalk up to this other boy, who was clearly of higher status, indicated by fine clothing unmarred by dirt and his hair neatly parted. It crossed Kafka’s mind that he looked vaguely familiar, though he didn’t have the patience to try to place it. Perhaps the schools intended for people of his class had gotten too full, or some strange situation arose that required him to attend St. Rosseau’s.

It didn’t take the older boy’s clean appearance to cow Kafka, though; what really had his head hanging the way it did as he pulled himself into the room was the sharp look that boy was giving him. It definitely brought back a feeling of déjà vu; Kafka could’ve sworn somebody had looked at him with an identical look not too long ago.

It worsened when the boy spoke, though. His voice was cold, but not in the soothing way Kafka’s parents spoke like cool water ready to put out the fireplace in the evenings. Kafka had never been in a blizzard, but he imagined that they were a lot like this boy: bitingly cold, harsh, and unrelenting. He didn’t resemble any of the kids in Kafka’s classes- those kids tended to smile at him and appreciate his outbursts and heated discussions. This boy looked like he would stop such impassioned machinations at the first opportunity.

“Say, aren’t you the boy whose house burnt down?” this Jack Frost asked. His eyes seemed to pierce Kafka and penetrate deeper than anything his skin could show. Kafka decided he didn’t like such transparency. He didn’t know how to put it into words, but he didn’t like the way this boy pierced him with nothing but his eyes. Kafka could do nothing but nod.

“My father is one of the guards who went to investigate, you know,” the boy said with what Kafka could only call a lofty air. It now occurred to Kafka why the boy looked so familiar: his father could only be the badge-adorned guard he’d seen trooping down the street this morning. Evidently, that little squadron had been bound for the Crowe home. Everything about the boy radiated, at least to Kafka, a sense of arrogance. Kafka saw a rude child, somebody spoilt, probably on the road to success. He saw someone who would rub all his advantages in the noses of those less fortunate.

No, he did not like this winter boy. Kafka thought he vaguely recognised him, only from gossip he’d heard passed down from the older kids: Jackson Fritz. Kafka had pegged him right; Fritz was reputed to be spoilt and bigheaded.

“Do you know what they found?” the snob asked like Kafka wasn’t deep in the flux of wrestling his growing heartrate and accompanying emotions. The boy spoke with the air of someone who knew something the other didn’t, like hanging a dead mouse over a cat. Kafka stiffly shook his head. He knew he ought to be interested in what the boy had to say, but Kafka was not willing to give up that satisfaction.

“Well,” the winter boy pressed on as if Kafka hadn’t responded (which, in all fairness, he hadn’t really), “I heard that your parents were convicted for fire magic.”

The chill emanating from this walking blizzard overtook Kafka’s spark of heat, leaving him cold inside. Kafka paled.

He forgot the bathroom, forgot Jackson, forgot his homework-induced guilt. Kafka charged into the schoolhouse. Class was not yet in session; everyone was still settling down and retrieving their supplies. This meant Kafka could make a beeline for the only adult in the vicinity he felt comfortable enough to confide to: Mrs. Gurney.

Mrs. Hestia Gurney was not a remarkable woman. She was not especially pretty. She was not particularly clever or witty. But she was kind. This was why Kafka had reasoned his excuse for leaving his homework unfinished would be satisfactory. Mrs. Gurney was not like many of the other humans populating Valmerys- people interested mostly in themselves. She had taken Kafka’s place as favourite teacher for a reason, after all.

His heart had melted from the frost Jackson had breathed onto his being, and now it hammered almost painfully. “Missus Gurney, Missus Gurney!” he called. The panic lacing his tone was unnecessary; Missus Gurney was noted for being remarkable in her ability to listen. Her kindly contoured face turned with concerned brows raised.

“Kafka, dear? Are you alright?” she asked, her gentle voice dwarfed by Kafka’s enormous agitation. Missus Gurney was one of the only people Kafka had ever met who could rival him in physical smallness. In his mind, she was smaller; she wasn’t as explosive as Kafka.

Although all thoughts of his homework had long since departed, Kafka found a new reason for hot tears to brim his eyes. He couldn’t describe it. It was like somebody had taken the fire that had brought their house down and started all this chaos and shoved it into Kafka’s chest- and now the heat worked itself up his head and into his eyes. Surely that was the cause of the water: his body was just trying to extinguish the flames.

Missus Gurney did not need to crouch to meet Kafka’s level like most other grownups needed to. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder and asked him again what was wrong. With trembling lip and heart, Kafka explained to her what Jackson Fritz had said.

He was given an early dismissal. His classmates muttered a few things behind palms. But no one approached him. Mrs. Gurney was the only one who had asked Kafka if he was alright.

Kafka ran. He did not pack his things; there was no time.

Valmerys had strict laws on magic. If his parents had already been convicted for practising…

No. There had to be some kind of misunderstanding. Perhaps Jackson… perhaps he’d made a mistake? That would have to be- it was the only apparent- it could be the only explanation.

The streets were quiet; at this hour, everyone was working in their own fashion. This was good; it meant Kafka could tear down the street unburdened by the obligation to skirt around people. His smoky halo appeared again, though this time it drifted in the air he left behind in his haste to reach home… or rather, what was left of it.

Was it really a house, after being burnt down? Was it really a home, if his parents had been taken?

And if they really had been taken… Kafka could barely think of it. He didn’t know what happened to people convicted for magic, but he knew it couldn’t be good.

He ran past the charred remains of his home. He thrust open the door to the Hans’ house. Kafka looked around. His eyes worked hard to extinguish his burning heart.

“Where are they?” His voice was hoarse.

Mister Sedric Hans was the only one at home. He looked at Kafka. His eyes were sad. He didn’t need to answer.

“Your mother left a letter for you.” Sedric offered the shaking child an envelope. Kafka took it.

_My sweet Firefly,_

Kafka glanced at Sedric. Mister Hans gave him a sympathetic look. Kafka’s legs moved him up into the loft he’d been sleeping in, largely of their own accord.

He avoided looking at the letter for a moment. Kafka glanced out the window. He and the Hans boys had noted a family of crows nesting nearby. Kafka did not see any of them, now- only the unhatched eggs. Where were the parents?, he wondered. Didn’t they need to care for their young?

Kafka’s numb fingers worked open the folded letter again.

_My sweet Firefly,_

_I have only one thing to say to you: I’m sorry. Kafka, you are so special. You have always known this, in the way other children either take to you or dislike you so easily. You have never quite fit in as easily as the others, have you? I remember when you were little, and you asked me why you felt so different from everyone else. I told you then that it was normal for all little boys and girls to feel different, and that you would figure yourself out eventually._

_I will make things clear- I should have been honest with you about from the beginning._

_You are not human, Kafka. You have inherited fire magic, a form of elemental magic that is destructive and difficult to control. When you were a baby, you once crawled into the fireplace- what a scare that was for me and your father! But it was confirmation that what we had dreaded was true. I’m so sorry, my lovely son. I’m sorry things couldn’t be different, and I’m sorry I passed this curse onto you from my family._

_By the time you are reading this, you will surely know that myself and your father are gone, likely taken by the Guard. I do not know what will happen to us, but you will probably not see us again. I wish I could hold your face one more time, my dear._

_I am writing this not only to explain to you your nature as a fire elemental, but also to warn you: Kafka, you must not be caught. Valmerys will not tolerate your magic, and I shudder to think what they would do to you if they discovered you. You must run away, dear. It pains me to say it. You are so young! And you have so much ahead of you! But as your mother I must do what I can to ensure your safety, even if I may not ever see you again or be able to know whether my efforts have succeeded._

_Run, Kafka. Run as far as you can and never come back to Valmerys. Go to Wynterhaven if you can- it is very cold there and it might be easier to control your curse there._

_I am sorry that it is because I am your mother that you are firebranded. It will always be my greatest regret to bring that burden upon you._

_Please remember that I love you, my Firefly. And your father does, too._

Kafka noticed, when he was done reading, that the paper was stained with drops of water. Had they been there before?

He packed his bags and did not speak a word to the Hans family; they had done more than enough and did not need to know the cause for Kafka’s abrupt departure.

He needed to leave. After all, he was firebranded.


End file.
